soil

faces rose around me in the wet cement

they were human faces dogs cats wild

faces that quickly appeared and sunk back

an ostrich a rabbit a hawk or an attacker

their features created a surface with more

traction in a tilt shake or spin event 

i could grab onto an ear or lodge my foot

against a stiff upper lip fit my cheek bone

into a temple like the days when we were

bodies forced together taking conceding

wanting giving each other space or flesh 

turning toward or away but never moot

to avoid a hardening and crumbling past

i release my grip and step onto the grass

where creatures come and go inconsequentially

stop only to acknowledge sensual density

and persons free of notice by urbanity

take root in soil that borders all humanity

by Peg

tissue rainbow/ pot of foil

praying hands

 

Still Ill & Ill-Advised Still: HIV Bros

Jer: We're here for CANCER BEATDOWN, my death partner Ken and myself. Wow, Ken. You look like you got in the ring for a CANCER BEATDOWN and lost. Badly. How are you even alive?

Ken: There's where you err, Jer. I make no claim of livelihood. 

Jer & Ken: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Jer: Ya just our luck to get a charity gig, right audience? 

Ken: No, not right audience. They're all on their phones. 

Jer: They're probably calling you an ambulance. You really look like shit. 

Ken: Too bad they can't call an ambulance for the shit in your pants.

Jer: You mean a dump truck? 

Ken & Jer: HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Ken: Say I heard you gave your mom AIDS in the womb.

Jer: Say what? I hear you perform fellatio with your butt. Fraud much?

Ken: What now? How many time an hour you go back down on open ass with your prefer-not-to-say status?

Jer: I guess we good.

Jer & Ken: HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Ken: Wait. Your med port popped out of your chest, mate. Let me just

Jer: Don't you touch it. It's on break. It gets depressing in my body.

Ken: At first I thought it was another huge tapeworm like the one you sneezed out in the tanning bed or the one came out your eye and disappeared into the public sewer grate.

Jer: I hate you filthy bitch. 

Ken: I hate you disgusting dirty tramp hole fornicating disease vector.

Jer: ...and scene! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Thanks for your support everybody. Good night! 

Ken: Good night!

Ken & Jer: Beat it down!

[Ken and Jer fly at one another, punching, biting, and clawing, land on the stage and begin to draw blood and leave hair as MPS security struggles to pull them apart and get them back into their separate palliative cells at the Chang K. Chang Chank Chain Gang Med Tank.]

Opening Act

CANCER BEATDOWN CHUKKACHANK

Phyllis [trans.]
Sports N' Sex Crimes Bugle

The worms

Hellooo, Chukkachank!  Yall our third stop on the gonna stop it gonna stomp it gonna beat it down CANCER BEATDOWN village tour! At this event exclusively, we're delighted to have with us all of these respected thinkers, freaks, entertainers, collaborators all in our cause (in no particular order):

LaChama fumbles with the mike for a moment her thoughts racing for example mike, i wish i was fumbling with Mike not a mike haha pull it together, etc. It's a list just read the list they'll love it.

Ok here we go: 

International Plate Spinning Silver Medalist, P'tata Peppa Poke Chop, who will be spinning how many? many plates simultaneously, I think they're balanced on thin wobbly sticks reeds...what? to beat down cancer. 

Sassy, stunning, and late: it's Weida Haafenaur the latest queen ever to hold on to her job more than six month give it up for Weida. Tonight she'll be... late haha. It's for cancer.

Without using language, La LaChama's mind wondered Am i over-checking my privilege, trying to sound folksy because i perceive the Chanklands as a proverbial heart-and-soul motherland/gift shop locked in a time of pathos beauty servitude that i can continue to stunt and oppress? Is this genocide by reverence? 

In Chukkachank, I am sure you're more than familiar with your own stone tom-tomists, Subsidence, with Turr D'Ailans and the Subsidents. They will be outright wailing on this joint for cancer baby wait you'll see Turr D'Ailans later everybody thank you Turr. 

The worms. Trapped.
In the jumping beans. 
They haunt my dreams. 
They kick without end. 
When you crack the bean and 
kick them out, 

they crawl back in again. 

Any horror lovers out there? Hope so. We've got a real-life horror haver who lived to be here tonight and relive her traumatizing story before our eyes. This presentation does include MPS certified missing maimed scarred (MMS) artifacts so we ask that you view as one time only and understand consequences for not doing so. 

Any guesses so far? You're right! It's trafficked sleep worker Uwe Behan. What happened when Uwe was discarded by Pharmsupply and left to subsist in a life shed at the center of an abandoned holo-story called Walden Pond? See for yourself and attempt to ask it questions, right here. Stay for that. 

Finally everyone. We all know: it is ill-advised. 

Here, the audience is already breaking from a hush to angry whistles, shouts of NO! and loud raspberries. 

So we thought we'd better put them up front and get them the hell out asap. I give you the two-and-only, original bad guys, the hope-to-die-est of all the hope-to-die, the AIDS Bros! That's right. Don't remember? Yes! It's them. 

From:
Record dump
CANCER BEATDOWN
Phyliss [trans.]

I Don't Feel Like a Woman

emotions

i'm cryin'

but it don't make me feel like a woman

i'm feelin'

the blockin'

without any need to come out as a queen

i'm frightened

i'm hidin'

but mostly to keep all of you safe from me

you're kind and

you're patient

so happy to have all of you on my team

i'm laughin'

not dyin'

so why does it seem like i've crossed a line

i'm tired

i'm thinkin'

i needed to stop and just take some time

to slow down

and hang on

while doctors drain my testosterone

Event Opener

"I Don't Feel Like a Woman"

Sung by: Harley Hannie-Kaufi

Lyrics courtesy of: CANCER BEATDOWN
Phyllis [trans.]

Surgical patio

Are you ready to enter the chamber? 

...

Missy? 

[Are you insane? How would i in any way be ready for that? Braino knows better than to move toward the chamber. A rodent would have to stop and think twice before continuing on into the chamber for cheese. How about you first?]

Missy?

I can't shake this strong feeling that i will come out a different person: not better, but uncomfortably new. 

Well, i can't, you know, you should ask

I also have a premonition-level expectation that my life and its contents up to this point will have disappeared, and all I'll be able to do will be to just keep moving forward as a new, strange person.

Oh here comes Dr. Thong. Just in time. 

Dr. Donna Thong struggles for a moment with the sliding glass and sliding screen doors, but soon steps out calmly, audibly exhaling, onto the surgical patio. 

Hello Missy. Hope you're not chilly. Are we ready to enter the chamber? 

Uh we meaning you and Nurse Mike? 

Haha! Good one. I'm glad you are retaining your sense of humor dear. Now if you'd just like to

Nurse Mike steps up to the plate in a manly fashion.

I'm not sure she would like just at the moment doctor. I'm sure that you'd agree that if the same patient were a Jan, there would be a psychiatric support panel out here with us instead of a swimming pool. 

Ok. I see. Missy, you know we think of people like you people of your heritage as great warriors. You are fierce. Think about it. Your babies are born looking so fierce you know one day soon they will be able to kick your ass or at least appear to have that power. Our babies are born looking so wholesome and worthy that it's annoying to everyone who is not immediately related by blood. 

Nurse Mike once again does his best to advocate for the patient. 

Of course all babies are beautiful, but let's not even get into that fraught debate!

Indeed, Nurse Mike. But we may all be able to agree that babies do not have a conscience. Their patterns in an adult would be called sociopathic. And this brings me to my point. We must identify all and any of the babies who are somehow endowed with adult bodies, especially if they are in a position of significant responsibility. 

Mike and Missy look at one another silently, and Dr. Thong realizes that she has fatally digressed. 

Missy. I'm just trying to say that i'm so sorry that our societal biases have caused you to suffer much more trauma than necessary over the procedure. The chamber is not a place of hostility. 

...

And because i do respect you as a legal person, i'm going to lay it out for you here, now, with complete honesty. 

Thank you Dr. Thong. I appreciate that. 

Because it's certainly not nearly as dreadful as you may have imagined. First of all, after you enter the chamber, have engaged with the treatment, and satisfied the chamber as to your readiness, you will exit the chamber. 

Uh-huh, ok

At that time, you will come out like a different person: not really better—more like uncomfortably new. 

...

Also, your life, its contents up to this point, will have disappeared. Pretty much all you'll be able to do will be to just keep moving forward as that new, strange person.

What... did you? AHHH Dr. Thong you are effing with me you bitch! You heard me talking to Nurse Mike! AHHH

I know! How could I do that? I'm so sorry darling, I couldn't resist. Of course none of that it true. You're such a worry wart! Now spit out your gum, hand over any jewelry or other metal items, drop your gown, and skedaddle right on in there for me now. That's right. See you soon! 

 

tatters

The Jansdaad economy appears to be in tatters today as Jans from Flatchank to Janstanopol are taking yet another "Day of Growth and Reflection" after being released from most remote muscular decisioning (RMD) control points and friday funday brain nurturing processes after the crash of K5000 has been maybe 2 moons.

Spokesmen for the Jans do not disagree that their own employers including leaders of all city-level governmental functions are now discredited and impotent. However, Jan enslavement by MPS did mean sustenance in the form of the vital services the Jans themselves were working to provide. After lifetimes of having their choices made for them, Jans may not realize that they are effectively on strike against each other.

"Why would they want to mess up an entitled situation like that?" asked Jodi Al Arn-Yirshert, an observer for the fleke security service. "Sure, they were deciding some of your muscle choices for you, but your brain is not really a distraction as long as you do the chants. All your needs are provided for. What's the beef?"

Compassionate sanitation, water and meals on oxcarts are being provided to all Jan hives temporarily by MPS and CANCER BEATDOWN. 

by Phyliss [embedded]
Sports N' Sex Crimes Bugle

mile-long train in the window

what happens here and what it sounds like are stretched the way a map seems wider in the middle

it's set up for the long haul and even though we try to keep in line with modernity 

the songs are long and the moon is slow and folks give in to the momentum of the generations

you might sit at a bar and yawn or call it movie night when you're just dozing off with a bulb on

but if you're listening you can tell the distance between rough times and fire flies and the lightning

the train you see is a perpetual machine that trips light like a star can hide behind a table fan

we've still got love and hating in the forever or in the reflection but the track is laid for speed

don't need a bottle but i've a corn pipe and the smoke curls through the window in its own time

a long train on its own steam can make the light trip so that it may seem like a perpetual machine

Fyaskmi S. Booshia

Municipal flood plain

Even its tilted geometry resists our civilized template

The surfaces of the municipal flood plain are not 

flat but neither are they random as are the low

roiling local humps framing the town never

upending a tractor often disappearing in the tassels

These are rivules puffed with generational sod

a space involved deeply on one end by a circle 

of ancient oaks and their contortions buried

water lungs flamelike arms culling the suns 

claiming two of four directions at this point their 

Greatest pleasure derives from the release of their

heaviest cares giant rotted gnarls or lightning 

spiked organic god spears that can scold bobbing

in the soil but not enough to fill bely upstage

Mthyuh's purpose and dominance here

This is the message of the municipal flood

plain and it can be apparent to any pilgrim 

merchant worker present here tonight:

"We can hold this much, this far."

Look, now, to her horizons

A true flood would lap at our 

waists but this emptiness is a 

well of safety as well as for 

vainer beasts a lost sum of 

acreage for feral ones a 

Habitat mating arena 

range map and 

for all a space to look or 

swoop upward and see or 

join the grander patterns of the clouds. 

La Pegyuh-uh

"Rain for Mthyuh's Parched Uvular Cavity"
Swirling Pond Heavy Sewer Grate Dedication

Villages Tour

Flatchank

Days of Destruction

Phyllis [Trans.]

CANCER BEATDOWN

To be la LaChama is to live every moment with a reminder that a i am not able to meet the expectations for my station and b i am vulnerable to accusations of fraud

Now that i have been called upon to participate in a public event, the CANCER BEATDOWN, to bring words that can provide understanding knowledge catharsis enlightenment empathy and of course healing is another one of those tall moments from whose shadow i can barely poke out my toe

But if i am empty my people are empty and my people cannot be empty even while i am a match that cannot even burn itself

Strike me O Pegyuh so that i may burn and burn in my people

Pegyuh-uh! Pegyuh-uh!

Please say: Burn, burn for cancer LaChama

Burn, burn for cancer LaChama

My money is worth nothing if the Filter of Loathing is consumed

Burn, burn for cancer LaChama

I may as well burn my money too

Burn LaChama

We may as well burn our money to beat down cancer

beat it down! beat it down!

We know that more than 80% of cancer deaths were caused by bad choices

Well let's start making some better choices here today and show me the 

Show me the shiny gold coins

Show them hold them up to the suns!

Melt it down Burn the cancer

You see that you are standing on a grate

and the ground beneath it has opened up

and the darkness is the mouth of LaMthyuh

see the rainbow of light among your coins

imagine all that light raining down

people drop your golden light into the darkness

let it fall and listen to the sound

we can hear it now an unstoppable clankety CANCER BEATDOWN

As the applause dies i'll back away bowing from the podium and some raunchy MC will take over. It's your basic legal betting for charity event from then on as two giant screens track the real-time progression or regression of a MOD 7 cancer in two Jan subjects for an entire year. MPS gets 20% and i get about 4% of that. Subject's account gets a MOD payout upon verified termination but that bumps them to a palliative-course-not-approved [PCNA] track. The ensuing tragicomedy fuels more donative speculation for MPS and a high temple attendance rate from worshippers. There's a catch net below the grate of course. It borrows its sinister nature from the humble wishing well. 

from: 'Round Back of the Temple Life
by: La LaChama 
Phyllis [trans.]

Tried and failed to break out of your station?

Breakouts are not authorized. 

Your station is not constructed to be broken out of thus the word break.

You must break out of your station.

There is no legitimate support channel for this objective. 

If successful, you will likely have been seriously injured in the process. 

If you want to live you must break out.

Prompt: Does any individual or group in addition to yourself and significant others want you to break out of your station? 

If the answer is yes, your station is 1/5 or 5/5. 1/5 = both empathy and hatred for your station are high. Public would like to see 1/5 operators moved to 2/5, and 5/5 operators moved down many levels, killed, or to bring everyone closer to their level by creating new, higher levels, which has been known to create even more space between 5/5 and every other level. 

As you can see from the complexity of these calculations, which are only a glimpse of what K5000 is doing every second in all of our lives, it's probably going to be best, if you do decide to opt for self-destruction and attempt a breakout, or even if you go ahead and remain at your station and instead experience involuntary suffering and death, you've probably already arrived at the conclusion that it's best not to rely on groups or individuals who may or may not want you to break out of your station.

Prompt: Reflect on the emotions you might expect to happen between yourself and station mates when they realize that you are in the process of breaking out of your station and especially once you all realize that you have broken more than the station. 

Salvaged from crash of K5000
MPS release K5000-1
Phyllis [trans.]

Crash

The K5000 has been brought down in less than a day. 

Once a critical mass of friday fun day participants had been catalogued, located, and contacted, the now grownup Jans started learning the chant backwards. It was their best and only guess left at disconnecting their RMP grafts, which were initially put in place by the K5000 with the chant and the help of the nuns. 

muffins virtue muffins me send am first demons your eat me demon virtue

your am or first demons your eat Mthyuh virtue a send demons your send

your send or first me eat demons your muffin virtue virtue a am am i Mthyuh i

demons your send or first me eat Mthyuh muffin virtue a am i virtue a am i 

Peg's flesh lays once again steaming and broken of dignity 

this time strewn across 100 yards of beach like a massive 

alligator die-off and on, deeply, into the remains of a seaside thrill park

A Wherris feel is employed to load and distribute carfuls of her 

tissue into a slowly progressing line of open lorry beds

This is how broken her body is. It's difficult to make out the basic architecture, either the original one born of prehistory or the second one, conceived and constructed by the radical Jans who infiltrated the Mthyuh Preservation Society (MPS) Inter-special Workgroup (IW). Instead of bringing back god,

they had reached back in time to abduct and torture the daughter of god

they did it not even out of curiosity but rather to please the MPS preece 

by filling their wats with incense comfort illusion beyond relic living

relic that can be worn and operated as one with the deities worshippers

relics that can be reproduced and ranched for their precious sluff

relics of a time when just the monster was enough

 

There is surprisingly little to show for any parts of the K5000 that were not also parts of Peg: a few stone needles, a reimagined public oracle dispenser donut, sun-powered through hundreds of eyelid panels, most of which disintegrated on impact. They look like enormous dead lice among the tangled jungles and prickly coppices that were Peg's eyelashes.

We're sitting in the kitchen and we're more afraid now to go out than

while the machine was overhead because at least then life was predictable

Now our bodies seem not so cheap but more likely to succumb

To everything except for what they just got free of

But we'll succumb freely and maybe one day life will truly be all about choices

Quick takes during and among the first hours after the crash of the K5000
by Phyllis [embedded] Sports N' Sex Crimes Bugle

meat lens

I should add that Dr. Thong suggested going on MPS disability because of the anticipated side effects of the time graft, not because she's expecting me to be taken down by K5000 directly at this point. 

You speak of Dr. Thong, whose father was a butcher, and therefore sees public health through a meat lens.

Yes, don't we all? 

Well congratulations for not dodging or shrinking away from a timely decision. It's all about choices, y'know?

No. But it's an appropriate time for me to claim my entitlement. 

Ya you must milk the MPS early and often, as they say!

MPS proudly fulfills its promises because its promises are rooted in its purpose, its purpose in its mission, and its mission in its identity, which is slave and vittlement for LaMthyuh. 

Of course your point is that you are not planning your funeral, just tidying up to avoid having to confront all that in a hurry in the unlikely event of palliative failure. 

Actually, I am and have been planning my funeral for as long as i can remember. Have i mentioned? I'm leaning toward blasting Stooges' "Loose" before during and after the catapult hurls me into Mthyuh's pyre. 

Perhaps you just want to assure me that quitting all your jobs and cashing in your pension is not a red flag for imminent disaster. 

That's it. That's the one! Because it's not. 

Overheard on a cloudy afternoon near Santorabo Wat, St. Dick, Jansterdam
Phyllis [embedded]

Golden hour

In this golden hour the clouds were filthy and low

Their concerns were petty and they were posing

inappropriately to the moon, which was waning

How could they do this to you millions of significant

others were asking, how that? don't they know?

Miserly storms only blustered and spat

Humidity drew out but did not disperse

the urine of the dead and the infirm

Voices chemically cried out beyond the terminus

by Missy